European Resuscitation Council Guidelines 2000 for Basic Paediatric Life Support. A statement from the Paediatric Life Support Working Group and approved by the Executive Committee of the European Resuscitation Council.

The European Resuscitation Council (ERC) last issued guidelines for Paediatric Life Support (PLS) in 1998 [1]. These were based on the "Advisory Statements" of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) published in 1997 [2]. Following this, the American Heart Association, together with representatives from ILCOR, undertook a series of evidence-based evaluations of the science of resuscitation which culminated in the publication of "Guidelines 2000 for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care" in August 2000 [3,4]. The Paediatric Life Support Working Party of the European Resuscitation Council has considered this document and the supporting scientific literature and has recommended changes to the ERC Basic PLS guidelines. These are presented in this paper. There have been few major changes to the ERC recommended guidelines as some of the changes agreed in "Guidelines 2000" had already been introduced into Europe subsequent to the 1998 ILCOR "Advisory Statements" (Fig. 1).